The Stone, the Water, and the Wish
There are places where beauty feels deliberate—measured, calculated, composed. And then there are places where beauty seems inevitable. As if it had always been waiting to emerge.
The Trevi Fountain belongs to the second kind.
Rome has many fountains. This one feels like a beginning. And in a way, it is.
The story begins in the 18th century, when Pope Clement XII finally commands the construction of a fountain worthy of the ancient aqueduct beneath it: the Aqua Virgo, whose waters have flowed since 19 BC. The name—“Virgo,” the Virgin—recalls a legend. A young girl once showed weary Roman soldiers the spring from which the water came. Her name is lost. The water remains.
The architect chosen was Nicola Salvi, relatively unknown, yet entrusted with shaping not just a fountain, but a threshold between eras.
At its center: Oceanus, god of all waters. He stands not in triumph, but in command—balanced, eternal, drawn by two sea horses. One calm, one wild. They complete each other. Together, they become the sea as it truly is: provider and destroyer, serenity and storm.
To the sides, figures of Abundance and Salubrity mark the passage from myth to meaning. The cornucopia spills with fruit, not in excess, but as a sign of what can flourish when nature and human order align. Salubrity, holding a cup to a serpent, reclaims the symbol of the snake—long burdened with fear—and recasts it as renewal.
These are not just gestures of aesthetic balance. They are acts of reinterpretation, reminders that symbols shift depending on how we choose to see them. Just as water, shaped by its container, reflects back the form it fills.
Above, bas-reliefs tell the story of the aqueduct. One shows the maiden guiding Roman engineers. The other, Agrippa—trusted general of Augustus—ordering the construction of the channel that still feeds the fountain today. What these panels offer is more than context. They remind us that beauty, here, is not accidental. It is the final surface of deep infrastructure—technical, political, historical. Flow requires structure.
The Gesture That Remains
And then there’s the ritual.
You’ve seen it—hundreds, thousands of people turning their backs, tossing coins into the water with practiced form.
The tradition is simple, almost instinctive by now. With your back to the water, you raise a coin in your right hand, bring it level with your left shoulder, and cast it over—without turning your head, without breaking the moment.
The meanings follow a pattern shaped by repetition. One coin promises a return to Rome. Two coins are said to invite love. Three speak of marriage. And though few go further, some believe that a fourth coin may carry a deeper kind of wish—the kind you don’t speak aloud. The numbers shift from legend to folklore, but the essence is constant: the fountain becomes a medium through which private longing takes on a visible form.
Each year, more than a million euros are collected from the fountain’s basin. In the early morning, before the crowds arrive, city workers gather the coins and channel them into public projects—food programs, shelters, and community services. A personal hope transforms into something shared. Desire is returned not through destiny, but through structure.
And Rome, as always, knows how to turn myth into infrastructure.
This kind of ritual—intimate, public, and strangely enduring—is not unique to the Trevi Fountain. Around the world, there are places where people pass through space and feel compelled to mark it with a gesture.
In Kyoto’s Fushimi Inari shrine, pilgrims walk beneath thousands of vermilion torii gates, each donated with a silent prayer carved into its frame. At Victor Noir’s grave in Paris, visitors touch the bronze statue’s lips or place flowers on his hat, believing the act may bring fertility or romantic luck. In Ireland, the Blarney Stone draws those who climb its narrow stairs and lean backward to kiss its surface, hoping to gain eloquence. And on the Charles Bridge in Prague, hands trace the same polished spots on statues said to bring protection or return.
Each of these gestures, different in form but similar in spirit, reveals something enduring: the need to shape experience not only through thought, but through motion. A moment that passes through the body stays longer in the mind.
Sep 7, 2024
